What do you wanna do today?” “I dunno, Mary, what do you wanna do?”
“Don’t worry,” she said this morning, “someday this will be over, things will return to normal.”
“You mean someday we’ll be able to resume our boring lives? That we’ll finally be freed from torpor?”
For me, boredom has always exerted a siren pull — to the extent that once, inspired by a spate of entropic films coming out of Europe in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, I dreamed of heading up my own film studio dedicated to producing the kind of profoundly listless screenplays that I couldn’t get enough of. But ennui was considered too high-brow then, fit only for art cinemas. It might have a broader appeal now, now that there’s a captive audience for uplifting monotony.
As the languor lingers, and as she begs me not to give her any more reports from the front, I can’t help but pull her leg a little. “Mary, did you hear?” I call out from the kitchen where I’m reading the newspaper. “Unmasked, Trump Abdicates. Cedes Office to Cuomo, Who Is to Be Sworn in Tomorrow. Acknowledges he’s been an ineffective leader, and is stepping aside. ‘Putting America first,’ Trump says.”
She was not fooled — frankly, I didn’t think she would be — but was appreciative of the effort, and when I told her she could “beat me in backgammon now,” her smile told me that that was what she wanted to do today.
“Luck, be a lady tonight,” I sang as I rolled out the first die. “Luck be a lady with me.”
We would have been outside sporting the serviceable serviettes Mary had fashioned to go over our mouths and noses had not teens been whizzing by on hoverboards, scooters, and bikes, which gave us pause, as did the fact that, in heading for The Star earlier that day to pick up a copy on its stoop, the front passenger-side tire flatted just north of Round Swamp, resulting in a tow a couple of hours later to Steve’s. Better then to stay inside and duke it out with the one you love.
As I say, she usually wins, so you can imagine my glee when, surprised by joy, I won the first one, pulling even, however momentarily, in our coronaviral series. One yearns, especially if one has been denied any other athletic outlets, as has been the case lately, for such moments. To her credit, she remained poised as I celebrated with the Arabian double pikes, side gainer dismounts, and double back flips with three twists.
Of course she won the next game, and pretty handily, though I was happy to see that she was happy, and, in fact, I felt so at ease by the end of our 23rd straight evening of self-exile together, so at ease with her and with myself, that I thought if I died that night it would be all right.